Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:21PM
from the dan-brown-hangs-his-head-dejectedly dept.

First time accepted submitter Aguazul2 writes "In a familiar story relocated into the bizarre world of the Vatican, a whistle-blower who brought to light excessive overpayments on contracts to friendly suppliers was sent to the USA as punishment, and further sources of leaks are now being hunted down by a crack team headed by an 82-year old Opus Dei cardinal. It's just like Wikileaks, only with parchment and quills — probably."

You do realize that the Vatican is a sovereign state, right? The Vatican has the right to structure their reporting structure any way they want. It is not a democracy. In a democracy, the government is theoretically answerable to the people and therefore the people have a claim to being informed by whistleblowers as to inappropriate behavior on the part of government officials (and therefore whistleblower protections should exist to some degree in a democracy). The Vatican on the other hand is not in anyway a democracy. The various officials of the Vatican government are only theoretically answerable up the chain of command to the Pope, who is, theoretically, answerable to no power on earth. Someone in the Vatican government who reports inappropriate behavior to someone outside of the Vatican government hierarchy is not a "whistleblower", as, theoretically, there is no one outside of the Vatican government to blow the whistle to, they are, instead, a traitor (I am not sure if that is the correct word from the perspective of Vatican governance, but if it isn't, I am not sure what is). They have betrayed their commitments as a member of that organization (similar to someone who had reported such actions by a government official of the USSR to a western government).

Doesn't really matter what you or I think. It only matters what the Vatican and Italy think, and Italy only matters because the Vatican is functionally an Italian state even if they are allowed to claim sovereignty. Plus, if anyone wants to wage war with the Vatican, they have to go through Italy first.

The "legality" of a government is usually tied to some kind of justification as to how it is entitled to act as a government. There are various forms of justifications. Some a bit more outdated than the others, but none are less or more valid from a purely objective point of view. If you do not accept a non-democratic government, that's your prerogative, but it's not yours to tell anyone whether he should or should not respect the rule of someone.

The Vatican chose to be an elective monarchy (the only one left, btw). And as long as the marjority of those concerned (read: the majority of roman catholics) accepts this legitimation, it's valid.

It's a bit like money. It only has some value as long as people believe in its value.

Personally, I would not accept that kind of government as mine either. But it's not on me to tell the Vatican that it cannot be an elective monarchy.

Sort of like a well-known Army private reporting certain actions of the US government to the entire world? Giving that video on a DVD to his congressman (within the structure as you say) would have been protected by law, but releasing it to WikiLeaks, go to jail.

The Vatican is a "sovereign" state, in that its sovereignty hinges on the Italian Government continuing to honor the treaties between the two that have set aside Vatican City as such.

What is worse imho is how the Roman Catholic Church can flaunt local governments with this so-called "sovereignty" with regards to the affairs of the Church and its actors in those countries. So, does a whistleblower from the Catholic Church need to somehow make their way to a foreign embassy, then, and seek asylum? That's pret

Traitor is such a loaded word, and is misused in this context I think. A wife that leaves her abusive husband is a traitor. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and many others were traitors also.

Was Jonathan Pollard a traitor? The "whistleblowers" in the article are no less traitors to the Vatican than Jonathan Pollard was to the U.S. and were perhaps more rightly called traitors than Pollard (I have heard people argue that Pollard was not a traitor, but have never cared enough to follow their arguments closely enough to see if they have merit). Actually, that may not be true, some of these whistleblowers may be merely guilty of espionage (as some of them may owe a primary loyalty to some governmen

History is the consensus choice of alternate terms based on outcome (i.e., which side won the conflict).

In the immediate here-and-now, the choice is entirely based on the speaker's alignment with the parties in the conflict. The behavior of the organs of power is irrelevant to this. Only, perhaps, to the practical fate of the traitor/patriot/whistleblower/spy/heretic/saint. Hence, the availability

First point: the Vatican has its own law (canon law) which everyone is supposed to follow, despite the monarchical form of government everyone is supposed to follow. So it is possible for somebody to be a whistlblower, although that itself is a crime under canon law. That's why the clergy sex abuse scandal went on so long. Canon law precludes doing anything that would bring disrepute upon the church, which is why pedophiles weren't turned over to the police.

Second point: one of the people they are looking for is a person who suggested that the Vatican has more information about the 1983 disappearance of two fifteen year-old girls who held dual Italian-Vatican citizenship. That makes this an international incident. Their disappearance happened during a dispute between Italian organized crime and the Vatican bank. The mob had been laundering money through Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank in which the Vatican bank had controlling interest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvi#The_Banco_Ambrosiano_scandal). The implication is that the girls were kidnapped to put pressure on the Vatican to make good the Mafia's losses.

That sounds a bit Dan Browne, but after he was killed in a mob hit, an Italian gangster named Enrico de Pedis was granted burial in a Vatican basilica, an honor normally reserved for cardinals. The speculation is that this was a pay off for brokering a settlement between the Vatican bank and the mob.

The point is that it's not like the Vatican can operate in a vacuum. There are Italian interests involved here: Italian citizens, companies, and mobsters. The Banco Ambrosiano affair also involves the forgery of US securities.

'Since then, the Vatican has instead focused on finding out who leaked the letters, which it describes as "biased and trivial".'

Yup, instead of focusing on the problem at hand, or hell, even trying to determine if there really is one, they go looking to punish whoever failed to keep the information under the skirt. Or cassock. Or whatever they call that ugly black dress they wear.

But I guess that's religion for you. Think with your dogma, not your brain, and there is no problem a little

Corruption is highest in areas where the people have the reputation of being incorruptible/working for the public good.Religions are in this group, but so are...Unions,Activist Organizations,Health Services,Government Services,Education,Science...

Actually I am willing to bet the areas where there is less corruption (At least in corruption/dollar) is probably in business as everyone expects them to already be corrupt.

> Religion is gay.The gay news aka the good news aka the gospel, sure.One guy reportedly comes and says I have a good news for you.They put him to death and his followers go on like: he died and it's all YOUR FAULT. So your suggestion is quite apt but kind of specialized. Try with more universal/generic/devoid of meaning terms.

I think your post can be one of two things. Since I'm a charitable sort, I'm going to assume it's very witty and not a simple troll from a 12 year old. Here's why:

A few years ago, I was approached by a customer to create 1500 bumper stickers that said "Gay Guys Suck!". My boss got all squeamish, and was really hesitant to do this, as he didn't want our company to be seen as "anti-gay". I couldn't help but laugh at his discomfort, and went ahead with the job anyway.

The customer that wanted the stickers was a buddy of one of my buddies, and they were intending to hand them out at the gay pride parade in Salt Lake City (which is a surprisingly popular event here). The design was a psychedelic rainbow with black text. Oh, and when I say "buddies" I mean two guys that have been together for 15 years, and attend each and every pride parade, doing something like this each and every year.

The sticker was *designed* to generate a knee-jerk response from people who just don't get it, in a very clever version of "Bwahaha... sometimes you straight folks are so silly when you try not to be awkward..."

Don't always take what people say at seeming face value; sometimes there's a deeper concept you might be missing. The above post could actually be pretty clever, viewed in the right light.

I can give props to how Rev. Wolfwood [wikia.com] was portrayed, big-time. It showed a shitload of character depth and humanity in the guy.

OTOH, I can point you to at least one series with Catholicism as a subtext: Samurai Champloo [wikipedia.org] - from teh same fine gent who brought the world Cowbow Bebop. Context and Plot? No problem: The main characters were helping the girl looking for her father. This father of the female character (most likely Catholic given the historical context, because he...) was a rebel who participated in

Most of the Catholic-church-secret-agent ones are pretty fun to watch...

Well if you want the Church of England version.. you can always hunt down Gerry Anderson's The Secret Service [wikipedia.org] which features Father Stanley Unwin, the parish priest of a rural English village who also worked as a secret agent for BISHOP - a covert branch of British Intelligence that combats international criminal and terrorist threats.

It also featured the "Minimiser", a gadget that shrinks Unwin's assistant Matthew Harding to a fraction of his normal size for the purposes of conducting secret recon

I'm not talking totals, I'm talking percentages. Given that "government waste" is (and pretty much always has been) endemic, I suspect you may be on a fool's errand in trying to defend governments (apparently as is the feverish mod with the itchy trigger finger;) ).

"organizational waste" is endemic. Be it government or private. Talking percentages is meaningless, in the end - what is relevant is the total effected. And in that regard we could go without churches without noticing it.

It usually is, but that's too much of a generalization, as it encompasses all organizations, period.

Talking percentages is meaningless, in the end - what is relevant is the total effected.

1) Given differing monetary systems and centuries of counting for inflation, percentage of all income is the only fair measuring stick I could think of (otherwise, if you really want to go there with absolute dollar/euro/whatever figures, one could almost say that the Vatican would have given almost as much towards charitable purposes in total monies than the entire current US National Debt, if not more. I'm

Have you noticed 0 Catholics said a word about this article? Believe me its not because we don't know anything or because we are stupid and we just like to give our money out... Think about it for a second.

Most important: Why hate? i mean there is no constructive criticism here, only hate and disrespect. If you don't agree with a religion (Catholicism is a religion not a cult =p) Its cool, but what is the necessity to insult it or the people who believes in it? If you are fat or gay, yellow, black, etc Woul

And, for the record, the dictionary definition of the word "cult" is simply any section of a genre of any religion. Only here in America have people mis-used the word to indicate what they regards as "whackos". So, , by definition, Catholicism is definitely a cult of Christianity. (And generally a group of "whackos" who have drank their own brand of kool-aid, their own completely unsubstantited "beliefs", which are no more subs

Staying a member of the Catholic church implicitly makes you complicity in child rape and the devastation of Africa by AIDS. You may very well be a decent person, hell, most Catholics are decent persons, at least most of those that I know. However, I do not get how you can reconcile staying within that organization with your consciousness. The part of the Catholic church actually wielding political and clerical power is rotten to the core. You can not prop up those people and tell other people to be "better

Yeah, except for, uhm, governments? Church spending puts the "noise" into SNR when it comes to that. Besides, the raped altar boy does give a rat's arse about token charity. It's not like this is a balance sheet. Evil stays evil, even if it accidentally does good every now and then.

Never would have thought having a reputation as a whistle blower in the Catholic church would have been a career killer. Matter of fact I would have thought it would result some serious upward mobility.

God supposedly already knows your sins whether you tell them or not. In fact, he knows them before you even commit the sins, or before you even think of committing them first place. Telling a priest does nothing.

Thus the purpose of confession is so that the Church has the goods on everybody in the community.

Christians define their god as omniscient and timeless, so there is nothing he doesn't know -- past, present and future. Thus, he already knows what you will choose to do under your free will. If God didn't know, then he wouldn't be omniscient, which would seriously mess with Christian theology.

Reconciling the deity's claimed states of omniscience, omnipotence, timelessness, pure good and pure love with free will, evil, etc., has been a source of absurd twisted logic for quite a long time.

Who cares what state-of-the-art equipment they have, when they still believe in ghosts and goblins? All the scientific work in the world does not for one second make up for what this circus of repressive idiots did to Galileo Galilee, or for the actions of the Inquisition, so it makes no difference if they're doing observations, their data cannot be relied upon because they think an imaginary creature created all the stuff they're looking at, with the supposedly state-of-the-art equipment you claim they're

Must... find... albino... assassin... religionfreak... and... send... him... after... whistleblowers... (Amen?) ------ But seriously, what a weird story this is. Isn't the Vatican supposed to be all about "The Truth Shall Set Thee Free" because, erm, Christian belief mandates it? So what is wrong with a little whistleblowing? Why is someone exposing the truth even a "whistleblower" in this particular case? Very strange story all around...

... and nice red uniforms.I like how banishment to the States has replaced the comfy-chair as the punishment of choice.Too bad they didnâ(TM)t unleash this hound on the child-rapists theyâ(TM)ve hidden for so long...

Let me clearly state from the outset that I bear no ill will against any individual Catholics who wish to abide by the religion of their choosing. But to look at the long history of the corruption and arrogance of the Catholic hierarchy and not feel completely outraged is to facilitate their wrongdoing.

Just two recent examples: First, the child rape scandal. It was going on for decades, while superior members of the clergy would help cover up the abuse of children by pedophile priests by shuffling them around, colluding with local law enforcement to intimidate families, and paying hush money. To this day they fight the allegations, trying to minimize the impact of what they did and frame their actions as that of a small number of isolated "deviant homosexual" priests, while complaining about paying money to victims that they could be using "for the greater good." They don't talk about making reparations or holding accountable the officials who turned a blind eye or even assisted in the systemic corruption of covering up these atrocities.

Second example: this case. So the Vatican has been shown to be corrupt in its financial dealings, and what is their reaction? Hunt down the whistleblowers, rather than punish the ones doing the actual crime! It's the same kind of thinking--what threatens the Church, in their view, is not the failure to do the morally proper thing. It's whomever exposes their leadership for the arrogant crimes they commit under the guise of being holy.

I don't understand how Catholics can sanctify these dirty old men as the self-appointed leaders of their faith. If that's what your spirit tells you, then maybe you should consider the possibility that you're being held spiritually hostage by these people as a way to further their power, and the reality is that if you truly want to be closer to God, there are far better ways to do that than through these morally bankrupt charlatans.

AFAIC, anyone who still gives their money to the Church at this point *deserves* to get used. As long as they're not using my tax dollars, only the money of gullible suckers, the Pope could be throwing orgies for all I care.

Find and replace and will still make complete sense:Vatican => United StatesChurch => Nation

And we do sometimes put them in jail. Look at Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson. His fellow Democrats finally stripped him of his chairmanships almost a year after the infamous cash in the freezer was found in 2005. He was indicted for several bribery-related counts in 2007 and convicted in 2009, and he's still not in jail.Okay, maybe that wasn't a good example. But hopefully he'll finally be in jail next

Why is it wrong for an entity to "reward" "friendly" suppliers? This isn't like the government collecting mandatory taxes, it's an entity that largely gets it's money from willing donors, they should be able to do whatever they want with the money. If donors don't like it, they can stop donating.

Or do all you slashdotters making fun of religious people's beliefs suddenly care that they're getting ripped off, as if you didn't feel they were getting ripped off all along anyway?

You're confusing legal and ethical. Anyone who isn't Catholic may not have any say in the matter and there may be no legal authority to stop it, but it would still be wrong if some of the Vatican administrators are using their authority to award supplier contracts to their cousins and pay double. That still doesn't make it a slashdot story, but the parallels to the wikileaks affair, and punishing the whistleblowers does.

...would let this outfit provide "spiritual guidance" (much less, give money to them) why?
The RCC has a centuries long history of misdeeds and corruption. Recent events seem to indicate that they've cleaned up their act only enough to no get themselves lynched. WTF, people? Couldn't you pick a slightly less evil church to provide answers to those questions you're to afraid to answer for yourself?

The inquistionLet's beginThe inquistionLook out sinWe have a missionTo convert the Jews(Jew ja Jew ja Jew ja Jews)We're gonna teachThem wrong from rightWe're gonna helpThem see the lightAnd make an offerThat they can't refuse(That the Jews just can't refuse)

The thing that got my attention is that one of the leaked letters discusses "the likely date of Benedict's death." Could that possibly be true? Or is the original article writer just trolling to get a rise out of conspiracy theorists? It is so bizarre, it just might be true.

They resort to much more earthly means... And since they're an extra-territorial entity in a country with a strong mafia presence, their own bank [wikipedia.org] can play many special tricks to bless money coming from less-than-pious activities.

It's in Italy* and involves the Catholic Church, of course there is corruption going on. Actually, since corruption is the norm is it really corruption, or just an undocumented procedure?

And although I do agree that there are a fair number of stories on this site regarding action against whistleblowers, does that mean that each story regarding the hunt for whistleblowers should be discussed here, or just the ones that are nerd based?

And although I do agree that there are a fair number of stories on this site regarding action against whistleblowers, does that mean that each story regarding the hunt for whistleblowers should be discussed here, or just the ones that are nerd based?

Don't know, I don't set editorial policy at Slashdot.:-P

But, many of us are quite interested in such stories in terms of the societal context. Admittedly, it might be a bit of a stretch for Slashdot though since there's little connection to technology.

That seems like consistent behavior to me. The problem with whistleblowers is that they won't necessarily limit themselves to mundane things like bribes and corruption, they might just as easily start giving out details on the clerical ecstasy of introducing young boys into the Sacred Mysteries.

from WP:"... Pope John Paul II named Ratzinger as the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the "Sacred Congregaton of the Holy Office", the historical Inquisition...."

Unfortunately, you got bad information. Let's get you started on the basics first: Start here [wikipedia.org].

It ain't the "Spanish Inquisition" as you and GP were talking about. That particular group is detailed here [wikipedia.org], and ran independently of the Vatican (it was a pet project of the Spanish crown). Surprisingly, as an institution the Spanish Inquisition lasted into the 19th Century.